Generally, a cloth treating apparatus means an apparatus that can wash, dry, or both wash and dry clothes, etc. The cloth treating apparatus performs either a washing function or a drying function, or can perform both washing and drying functions. Also, a cloth treating apparatus having a steam supply device has spread recently, wherein the steam supply device performs a refresh function of clothes, etc., such as wrinkles removing, smell removing, and electrostatic removing.
Meanwhile, conventional cloth treating apparatuses are divided into a front loading type and a top loading type depending on a loading direction of clothes. Also, the cloth treating apparatuses are divided into a vertical type and a horizontal type depending on a washing type, wherein the vertical type includes a pulsator or an inner tub which is rotated, and the horizontal type includes a drum which is arranged horizontally and rotated. Examples of the horizontal type cloth treating apparatus include a drum washing machine and a drum dryer.
Recently, such cloth treating apparatuses are on a large-scaled trend to meet user's request. In other words, outer sizes of cloth treating apparatuses for home use are on a large-scaled trend.
In accordance with such a large-scaled trend, a large-scaled apparatus should be driven to dry objects of small quantity. In this case, a problem occurs in that it is disadvantageous in view of energy saving.
In case of a drum type dryer, since a drum is rotated to tumble objects to be dried, a problem occurs in that the drum type dryer is not suitable for drying of footwear, etc. Furthermore, it is general that footwear of small quantity such as a pair of footwear or two pairs of footwear is washed. In this way, when a conventional dryer is used to dry objects of small quantity, since a drum should be driven and a heater and a fan with high capacity should be driven, it is inefficient in view of energy.
In this respect, instead of the conventional large-scaled washing machine, a small-scaled dryer having capacity smaller than that of the large-scaled washing machine is required. However, it is not desirable in view of space use and a fine view that two washing machines are provided for each home even though one of the washing machines has a small scale.